Fact or Fiction: Hybrid ERP Deployments

With cloud computing and cloud ERP gaining additional attention in the marketplace, ERP vendors, resellers, and solution providers are quickly positioning their products and services as “cloud-enabled”. However, in my humble opinion, to simply put ERP software on a hosted server and provide subscription-based pricing does not a cloud solution make. A key value proposition for cloud ERP is the ability to support a truly hybrid ERP deployment. In the next section we will discuss what is an ERP hybrid deployment including the opportunities and challenges this type of deployment presents.

What is an ERP Hybrid Deployment

A hybrid deployment method has the potential to enable customers the flexibility to deliver ERP capabilities in the most cost-effective manner to users. Hybrid deployments would allow for an optimal mix of the major ERP delivery models.

ERP Deployment Types

An ERP solution that can support a hybrid deployment must be architected in a manner to support multi-platform environments simultaneously. In general, following are the opportunities that a hybrid ERP deployment can provide to customers:

Advantages of Hybrid ERP Deployment

Opportunity

Description

Rapid Implementation

A hybrid ERP model may give you the flexibility to quickly implement a new ERP module or feature set. Even if you decide to deploy on-premise having a hosted site for prototyping and development can give you the opportunity to start design/configuration activities faster.

Shorten Maintenance Cycles

As an IT Director I am faced with the reality that IT maintenance cycles are being reduced given increase demand for ERP availability by business users. Given this fact, I am looking a cost-effective, on-demand IT infrastructure resources (ex. Infrastructure As A Service) to help shorten the ERP maintenance window.

Load Balancing

As part of any ERP solution you will have both real-time and batch processing. There are different performance requirements for real-time versus batch processing. A hybrid model may provide you the opportunity to have unique performance tuning configurations better suited for specific processes.

Greater Vendor Independence

I’m not a huge fan of the “single point of accountability” value proposition because I have rarely seen it work. If an ERP solution can truly support a hybrid ERP deployment then we all should have greater flexibility in choosing the right partners to be a part of our IT value chain to business users.

Challenges with ERP Hybrid Deployments

As the ERP industry moves to a true ERP hybrid model there are several challenges that must be addressed as we take to next evolutionary leap.

Challenges with moving to Hybrid ERP Deployments

Challenge

Description

Coordinating Support Activities

Coordinating software development and maintenance activities across the ERP platform. Since ERP support business processes and business processes will cover multiple functional areas (modules), coordination and prioritization of ERP support activities will be critical to reliability.

Integration & Orchestration

Integration is a given but business process orchestration will be extremely important to support a seamless business solution execution.

Seamless UI

Simply stated, the end-user should not be able to see a notable difference in appearance and performance across the deployment models.

Master Data Management

As long as an ERP hybrid deployment requires multiple database instances then Master Data Management will be a key enabler to keep instances in sync.

As one looks across the ERP industry we are observing some real signs of movement with hybrid ERP deployments. However, at this point I personally would not conclude that the ERP industry has reached the final destination. In the next section I will list a few of the core characteristics for assessing an ERP vendor’s ability to support hybrid deployments.

Assessing Vendor Solutions to support ERP Hybrid Deployments

A hybrid deployment approach enable customers to have a more scalable ERP solution versus limiting their sizing options to a single deployment model. Four major factors determine how viable a vendor’s hybrid ERP deployment offerings are:

ERP Architecture: Is the ERP solution constructed in such a way that allows software components to reside in multiple delivery platforms (on premise, hosted)? Integration and orchestration of ERP activities are key software enablers to support hybrid delivery

ERP Partner Ecosystem: Does the ERP vendor have consistent, reliable partners with a portfolio of hardware/software and professional services to support multiple hybrid delivery models?

ERP Pricing Model: Does the ERP vendor allow customers to utilize multiple delivery methods concurrently? Are there any price penalties or legal restrictions imposed on customers from moving between delivery models?

Portability: Customers have the ability to move data and customizations from one deployment model to another as needed.

Summary

My view of a true ERP hybrid solution is a software solution that enables the customer the flexibility to deploy both modules and major features across multiple platforms seamlessly.

Hybrid ERP Deployment Model

A hybrid ERP deployment is a great way to explore the cloud in an iterative, risk-adverse approach. Hybrid ERP may provide the opportunity for greater innovation, rapid deployment, or isolating batch intensive processes from self-service applications. The greatest value of a hybrid ERP solution is the additional flexibility it can provide customers to support business processes. Let’s hope that the wait is not too long.

8 Responses to Fact or Fiction: Hybrid ERP Deployments

Is this article is only for payroll or for enterprise meeting business requirements. Is this also mean take different modules from different vendors based on their superiorit in various business functions. Or it is only changing the deployement plan at various options. what we understand that is it some sort of implementing ERP fusion product.

This blog is for enterprise solutions – the payroll process is an example of how a hybrid ERP deployment may look. The context for this discussion is a single ERP solution. I have another blog article that may speak better to best of breed vs integrated ERP.

I concur with KK Garg. There are some ERP suites or sub-suites that “might” be hybridizable but, and here is the big “but”, the sync issues would be enormous. Working with higher ed PeopleSoft suites, for example, it is a tremendous challenge to sync student workers (where pay for hours is in HCM but pay for academic award is in CS and pay for grants is in FIN. Oracle/PS sells some very expensive integration tools (think Fusion and SaaS at the same time and you get the idea) – but who has the money and time to implement or support them? I shudder to think about earlier in my career when I wrote integrations across COBOL apps and db’s that were on the same platforms, OS, dbms and languages.

That being said – I think that Brett is on a good path to at least put out there the need and capabilities that a hybrid would bring. I liked the strength of the concept. Keep up thinking and projecting those ideas!